2024 has been a bumper year for music releases—and not least in the pop arena, where new records from the likes of Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, and Tyla have all conquered the charts. In fact, aside from that Drake-Kendrick beef and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour juggernaut, this year’s biggest music story has been the stratospheric rise of a new guard of pop sensations, in the form of Sabrina Carpenter (whose eagerly-awaited album drops this weekend), Chappell Roan (whose sleeper hit debut was in our 2023 best albums list), and Charli xcx (whose Brat summer just keeps on rolling).
From shoegaze to country, hyperpop to hip-hop, here find the Vogue staff’s picks of the best albums of 2024.
To listen to our picks of the best songs from each album, save the Spotify playlist below:
Adrianne Lenker, Bright Future
It only takes a few seconds of moody piano chords at the beginning of Adrianne Lenker’s sixth solo album (the musician is also known for her work as the lead singer and guitarist of Big Thief) to feel transported—and instantly reminded of Lenker’s masterful abilities as a songwriter. Across 12 bracingly intimate vignettes, Lenker’s devastating way with words—that opening track, “Real House,” touches on her itinerant childhood and the death of a beloved pet, but somehow lends those subjects a universal sweep—is matched by the power of the stripped-back, folksy instrumentation and the soft twang of her raw, unprocessed vocals. But there are exhilarating moments too, like her jangling, ferocious new version of Big Thief’s fantastic “Vampire Empire,” where she sings a looping refrain of “I’m falling,” her voice anguished and starting to break, so you’re never quite sure if that means she’s falling head over heels in love or plunging into the abyss. —Liam Hess
A.G. Cook, Britpop
As a long-time collaborator of Charli xcx (and co-executive producer of her year-dominating album Brat this summer) and having a hand in album standout “All Up In Your Mind” from Beyoncé’s Renaissance, A.G. Cook is arguably best known as your favorite pop star’s secret weapon. And his experimental sensibility has, in the past, produced album projects that bend the rules of the classic LP format, from 2020’s 49-track epic 7G to the futuristic Apple which dropped just a month later. Yet despite being spread across three discs (each representing past, present, and future), his third record Britpop feels like his most cohesive statement yet. That’s partly due to the lightly tongue-in-cheek title and the clever marketing rollout that accompanied it, but also the music itself: the album’s three-part structure allows every facet of Cook’s genre-agnostic talents to shine, while the playful fusion of glossy synths and fuzzy guitars with lyrics that reference Arthurian magic and mysticism come together to form a thrilling, escapist whole. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of pop bangers here, too: the Charli and Addison Rae-featuring “Lucifer” on disc three is as addictive as any mythical warlock’s potion. —L.H.
Ariana Grande, Eternal Sunshine
Prior to the release of Eternal Sunshine, Ariana Grande stated that she would not be releasing any new music until after her Wicked era was over. But then came the SAG-AFTRA strike last year, which gave way to what I believe to be one of Grande’s best—and certainly most mature—bodies of work. Picking up from where the 2020 hit-charged Positions left off, Eternal Sunshine sees Grande experiment further sonically (alongside pop savant Max Martin) while delivering a poignant and introspective examination of the breakdown of her marriage. There is the delicious fun of “The Boy is Mine” and “True Story,” and the timelessness of “We Can’t Be Friends,” which will be remembered as one of Grande’s fan-favorite hits. Oh, and be sure not to skip “Saturn Return Interlude,” which casually shines a light on why Grande was feeling particularly self-reflective at that moment in time. —José Criales-Unzueta
Astrid Sonne, Great Doubt
From Erika de Casier’s glitchy R&B hooks to ML Buch’s shoegaze-y guitar riffs and Clarissa Connelly’s experimental folk melodies, the Danish alternative pop scene is having a moment. But the one album of that ilk I found myself returning to again and again this year was Astrid Sonne’s Great Doubt—a subtle, stylish, and surprisingly witty document of complicated romance and millennial anxieties, that perhaps has more in common with her contemporaries in London (specifically, the likes of Tirzah and Mica Levi’s Good Sad Happy Bad project) than her fellow countrymen. (“You look at me… you look at me…” she sings cryptically on album standout “Do You Wanna,” over lolloping piano chords and eerie vibrato strings, before coming out with: “Do you wanna have a baby?”) Over the course of the record, the classically trained Sonne impishly pulls the rug from under your feet—veering between retro organ-like synths, riffs on her viola, twitchy electronic drumlines, and the occasional burst of lush strings or genuine emotion from her smoky, fluttering voice. But it’s all done with such elegance that you can’t help but find yourself being repeatedly drawn in. Oh, and it sounds great in a car while driving at night. —L.H.
Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter
“This ain’t Texas”... but it’s one fire country album! Part two of her (alleged) three-act musical project, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter is a stellar follow-up to 2022’s Renaissance. On the record, the singer takes on the country genre, and then completely redefines it—fusing its signature twangy sounds with elements of house, rap, and dance music. Come for the features—Post Malone, Miley Cyrus, country icons Willie Nelson, and Dolly Parton—but stay for the soulful Bey vocals (duh). Especially on tracks like “Blackbiird,” a cover of the Beatles classic featuring singers Tanner Adell, Tiera Kennedy, Reyna Roberts, and Brittney Spencer: a powerful reclamation of a genre that has historically drawn from—but excluded—Black artists. —Christian Allaire
Billie Eilish, Hit Me Hard and Soft
Turn on the radio this summer, and you were bound to hear a Billie Eilish hit or two. The singer’s third studio album is fast becoming one of the albums of summer 2024—with hits like “Lunch,” “Birds of a Feather,” and “Chihiro” leading the way. As Vogue writer Suzy Exposito wrote in her review, it’s the “uninhibited Billie we’ve been waiting for”; her ear-wormy, chill-pop tracks are more poetic, queer, unapologetic, and ethereal-sounding than ever. And if you haven’t cried-shouted to “Skinny” in your room yet, you’re simply not living. “People say I look happy, just because I got skinny,” she sings, “but the old me is still me. And maybe the real me. And I think she’s pretty.” —Christian Allaire
Bon Iver, Sable
Justin Vernon, as he’s wont to do, emerged from the Wisconsin woods this past election season to deliver a melancholic EP. Sable presented itself as a comfortable middle ground for fans of the artist, whose sound vacillates between stripped down and synthed out. The highlight is “Awards Season,” a mournful treatise on the end of a relationship, written in poetic riddles that would only make sense to him and his beloved. But even though we listeners aren’t privy to the specifics of their time together, we can all relate to Vernon’s raw a cappella: “Why do things gotta change / We were on our way.” —H.J.
Charli xcx, Brat
Sure, there have been more commercially successful albums this year, but none that have had the same cultural impact as Charli xcx’s barnstorming Brat. (“Kamala IS brat,” anyone?) But it wasn’t just that puke-green cover and the frenzy of speculation that surrounded some of the songs purported to be about other pop stars—and in some cases, were later confirmed to be true, as when Lorde and Charli “worked it out on the remix”—but the fact it was Charli’s most accomplished and cohesive album to date. At first, the wild pendulum swings of the album’s sequencing may feel bracing—the thundering synths of “Sympathy Is a Knife” followed by the twinkling confessional of “I Might Say Something Stupid,” for example—but it’s Charli’s masterful ability to reconcile those contradictions that have made her an accidental spokesperson for millennial angst, as she sings about everything from her complicated feelings around motherhood (“I Think About It All the Time”) to the double-edged sword of late-night debauchery in your 30s (“365”). Most of all, though, it’s just a really great time on the dancefloor, as her Sweat Tour with Troye Sivan and Partygirl DJ sets around the world have proven. It may feel like the album she was born to make, but the most exciting part of it all? Knowing that Charli is probably already one step ahead, planning her next giant leap for pop-kind. —L.H.
Clairo, Charm
It’s a unique joy to grow up alongside an artist, especially one like Claire Cottrill. The singer, more commonly known as Clairo, delivered her most probing venture yet with her third album Charm. With her ’70s-inspired sound, Clairo is in her element, exploring sensuality in a way that feels evolved beyond the girlish likes of her early hit “Bags.” On “Sexy to Someone” she sings about the thrill—the motivation, even—of knowing that somebody desires you, while TikTok breakout “Juna” talks about wanting to buy a new dress just so you can take it off. But it isn’t all rosy. Opener “Nomad” twists the knife with “I’m touch-starved and shameless / But I’d rather be alone than a stranger.” Love and lust, she reminds us, is just as thorny. —Hannah Jackson
Coco & Clair Clair, Girl
Bitchy, beautiful, your boyfriend’s favorite DJ. The Atlanta duo levels up their singsong rap with their third album Girl, making lobotomy pop with a lithe approach to its sonic palette: glitchy, Ed Banger-esque “My Girl”, shoegaze-y guitars on “Everyone But You”, trancey peaks and troughs for their madcap cover of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Our House.” All to package up hilariously hyper-niche, extremely online references and emblems of mass consumer America: “I’m too rare for Raya, stop inviting me, cucks,” goes “Kate Spade”. But the record finds its strength in sly moments of sincerity and tenderness too. “Do you see me how I want you to see mе? Do you think I'm cool if I watch this movie?” goes a line in “Gorgeous International Really Lucky.” Because hot girls get anxious too. —Anna Cafolla
Doechii, Alligator Bites Never Heal
Doechii has been gaining traction for a while now—first with low-key releases on Soundcloud, then with her TikTok-viral breakout hit “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake,” and most recently with a string of increasingly accomplished mixtapes—but watching her break out in 2024 felt like witnessing an overnight superstar being born in real-time. (If you need a Doechii primer, just watch her bewitching Tiny Desk Concert, which served as the most impressive showcase of her chameleonic talents yet.) Her skill as a performer, though, is matched by the music. On the formidable, genre-hopping mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal—its title a nod to her Florida roots—Doechii flexes every single one of her various musical muscles across 19 wall-to-wall bangers, from the joyous goofball rap of “Boom Bap,” to slinky Janet Jackson-esque R&B on “Wait,” to the fizzing ’90s energy of “Denial Is a River.” “I’m the new hip-hop Madonna / I’m the trap Grace Jones,” she spits on the fiery lead single “Nissan Altima.” Prepare yourselves: Doechii might have had a big year, but in 2025, she’s poised to go stratospheric. —L.H.
Dua Lipa, Radical Optimism
With Radical Optimism, Dua Lipa delivered the perfect summer album, full of luminous melodies that sound as if they were made by the sun glistening on top of the bluest Mediterranean waters somewhere. The songs are perfectly engineered to be the companion to your brain as you lay out somewhere and attempt to reach that blissful no thoughts/head empty lifestyle. But don’t take that to mean the songs are devoid of feeling: “Happy for You” may make you weep. —Laia Garcia-Furtado
Erika de Casier, Still
With Still, the Danish-Portuguese musician Erika de Casier delivered one of the year’s most arresting albums, blending slinky, Aaliyah-esque R&B with smooth, sophisticated soul—then pushing it through a futuristic, bedroom-pop filter to deftly avoid anything that felt like pastiche. (If you needed further evidence of de Casier’s zeitgeist-y instincts, there’s her side gig writing songs for the breakout K-pop act NewJeans.) Yet even if de Casier’s approach is modish, it always rings as authentic: a genuine homage to—and fresh twist on—the American R&B powerhouses she grew up admiring as a young girl, watching late-’90s music videos on MTV at home in Aarhus. That sense of fun is also present in the sly sense of humor that courses through the record, from the almost comical directness of some of the songs (“Is it getting hot in here / Or is it just me?” she winks on album standout “Ooh”) to the title itself, a tongue-in-cheek nod to records by J.Lo and Dr. Dre, in which the word “still” was used to emphasize their totemic status and longevity within the music industry. “It’s meant to be kind of funny, because I haven’t been around that long,” de Casier told Vogue back in May—but if Still is anything to go by, she’s only just getting started. —L.H.
Fabiana Palladino, Fabiana Palladino
It came as a surprise that Fabiana Palladino’s self-titled record, released in April, was actually her debut: the musician has been releasing music sporadically for over a decade, notably as the first signee to the label owned by Jai Paul, the enigmatic London-based musician whose handful of releases have had an outsize influence on 2010s pop and R&B. Despite a guest appearance from Paul on “I Care,” however, Palladino’s album is very much its own beast: a smokey, seductive homage to the finest ’80s pop—think Sade meets The Blue Nile with shades of Janet Jackson—that also cleverly avoids veering into straight-up nostalgia, thanks to Palladino’s immaculate, shimmering production. The irresistible “Stay With Me Through the Night” is one of the year’s best pop tracks, with an addictive funk guitar line underpinning her slinky, yearning calls to a departing lover. It may have taken a while to get there, but Palladino’s debut was firmly worth the wait. —L.H.
Father John Misty, Mahashmashana
The indie singer-songwriter Father John Misty has never done neat and tidy. Misty’s music is dense and arch, sophisticated and self-regarding, entirely unembarrassed about being the sound of male bourgeois Los Angeles-centric existentialist dread. And the songs can be really long. For all these reasons Misty has his haters, his devotees, and you kind of know right away which camp you fall into. His new, sixth album—equipped with a Sanskrit title that means “great cremation ground”—is lush and decadent and for those who can handle maximalist soft-rock, straight-up irresistible. Start with the orchestral title track which wanders through Misty’s vision of apocalypse. Stop off at the catchy “Josh Tilman and the Accidental Dose” which conjures the wry self-mythologizing of albums past. And then just luxuriate in the noir haunted poetry of “Screamland,” which is wrapped in distortion and mournful strings. Wild and epic. —Taylor Antrim
Fontaines D.C., Romance
Just when you thought rock music was dead, Fontaines D.C. came along to save it. Sure, the Irish five-piece have been bubbling under for half a decade now—their previous album, the excellent Skinty Fia, hit number one in the UK and Ireland upon its release in 2022—but their fifth album Romance, released in August, felt like their graduation to the big leagues. There are barnstorming, arena-rattling choruses: lead single “Starburster” recounts a panic attack singer Grian Chatten had in a train station, with the most brilliantly wacko chorus of the year. (“I’m gon’ hit your business if it’s momentary blissness,” he growls before gasping desperately for air.) Elsewhere, “Favourite,” the album closer, serves as a wistful reflection on the band members’ friendships, and an ode to “holding on to romance in a sometimes trying world,” according to bassist Conor Deegan III. And there’s been some killer fashion, too: an ambitious look of The Prodigy-meets-acid rave gear in Sour Patch Kids colors to match the ambition of their bold new era. It’s been a delight to witness. —L.H.
Glaive, May It Never Falter
I’d already decided that Glaive’s EP from earlier this year, A Bit of a Mad One, was one of the year’s best, but then Ash Guiterriez, 19, who records coolly beat-driven and hyperpop-influenced electronic tracks under that mononym, released a new album that I like even better. May It Never Falter is a collection of songs recorded in Iceland, suffused with sublimated antagonism and a wintery mood. The best tracks are the densely layered, “For God and Country,” which builds through choir samples to skittery beats to a pounding cathartic crescendo, the pounding danceable “Everydog Has Its Day”, and “Nobody’s Fault / Accept My Own” which goes hard and never stops–aggressive, tuneful and relentless. —T.A.
Gracie Abrams, The Secret of Us
It’s the year of the indie pop girl, and no one is leading the charge like Gracie Abrams. At 24 years old, Abrams has already mastered the singer-songwriter art of making her albums sound like a chapter in the book of her life—because who hasn’t had the kind of one-sided crush Abrams writes about in “Risk?” It reminds me of the Fearless and Speak Now-era Taylor Swift: when it was just a girl, her guitar, and her best friend Abigail (or, in Abrams’s case, Audrey). My personal highlight is “Close to You,” a song Abrams been gatekeeping from her fans since 2017: it’s the perfect mix of radio-friendly and passionate longing that she does so well. —Irene Kim
Hovvdy, Hovvdy
I needed something like Hovvdy this year, a sprawling, languid, soft-lit, glitchy, rootsy 19-track affair that has suited any number of my lower-key moods. These are bedroom pop songs that sound like they’ve been dragged across a Texas prairie. Hovvdy’s songwriting duo, Charlie Martin and Will Taylor, both originally from Austin, have been a reliable source of charming, twinkly bent-pop melodies for the better part of a decade. But their fifth album feels grander than anything they’ve done, reminiscent of defining albums by Bon Iver and Big Thief, but more spare in its effect. Threaded through with loops and prickly synth beats, Hovvdy’s best moments aren’t nostalgic, but rather invitations to chill out in the ever-present now. —T.A.
Idles, Tangk
The fifth album from Bristol, England’s Idles has been celebrated for showing the band as—finally, as some would have it—something other than a shouty, screamy, mosh-instigating political thing. Really, though: What’s a band with a conscience and a point of view to do? Vilified on one front for being too political, vilified on another for not being specifically political enough about this or that cause, or for being. . . .well, merely shouty, screamy, and mosh-instigating, they’ve advanced toward a new battlefront: love. (Though singer Joe Talbot has said, of the origin story of Tangk, that it came from him realizing “that I had sometimes lost my narrative in the art, which is that love is all I’ve ever sung about.”) It’s a brilliant move forward—aided by the brilliant addition of Nigel Godrich as co-producer (justifiably famed for his work with Radiohead, though it should be noted he’s also done albums with U2, Air, and Arcade Fire, among many others). The result contains enough slab-like riffage (“Gift Horse,” “Hall & Oates”) to be definitively Idles, but enough new developments—more crooning (“IDEA 1”); a collaborative track with LCD Soundsystem (“Dancer”); tender piano ballads, for God’s sake (“A Gospel”). Fifteen years into their story—they worked out their playing and live performance for eight years before releasing Brutalism in 2017—and they’re still pushing both themselves and their audiences out of their comfort zones. And that’s something to shout about. —Corey Seymour
Kacey Musgraves, Deeper Well
Saturn returns have certainly been a theme with music this year—and as someone currently going through theirs, Kacey Musgraves’s Deeper Well hit every single spot, twice. Here, Musgraves delves into folk territory as only she could, with a tinge of psychedelia and her ever-sharp wit. “Deeper Well,” the album’s title track, reads almost as an artist’s statement, with Musgraves narrating her growth since her own Saturn return, while “Cardinal” sees her delve into some late ’70s, Fleetwood Mac-esque territory, and “The Architect” displays some of her most evocative and touching songwriting. “One day, you’re on top of the mountain / So high that you’ll never come down / Then the wind at your back carries ember and ash / Then it burns your whole house to the ground,” she sings, with the kind of hindsight only time and proper soul-searching can offer. —J.C-U.
Katie Gavin, What a Relief
MUNA singer Katie Gavin has described her debut solo record as “Lilith Fair-core”: leaning into her taste for country and running with the Canadian Women & Songs CDs she grew up on. Lead single “Aftertaste” is a glorious statement of intent for a record built by and for queer yearning, a twinkly pop fantasy set in her oak-deep vocal tones about confessing it all to a butterflies-in-your-stomach-bolstering crush. “The Baton” reckons with intergenerational trauma, themes that still feel like a rarity in pop music, while “Sweet Abby Girl” is a delicate ode to a passed-away pet. Here, Gavin approaches emotions that rarely get the grace they deserve with gorgeous lyricism, bringing the big heart of MUNA’s festival-rousing anthems into small, intimate, important spaces—with a bit of bluegrass. —A.C.
Kim Gordon, The Collective
Kim Gordon’s always been hardcore, and if anyone needed proof, then The Collective, certainly delivered. Her talk-sing signature found a fuzzed-out wall of bass to smash up against again and again while talking about packing lists, random trinkets that decorate your shelf, or what it’s like to be a man in 2024. Seeing her perform this record live was nothing short of a revelation and punk as fuck. —L.G-F.
Kneecap, Fine Art
Fáilte! Welcome. Hang your coat by the door and head for the snug in the back of this West Belfast bar to find Mo Chara, Móglai Bap, and DJ Próvai scheming and sinking pints. Kneecap and their debut album Fine Art is conceptually built around riotous, drug-hazed nights in their beloved local. “More merch, more drugs, less cops, more thugs, more scum, more fine art,” is the provocative mission statement from the title track, which slyly samples a local news report on Kneecap’s mural of a police van up in flames. Reveling in the trio’s hedonism and Toddla T’s feral, skittering beats, Fine Art channels both the disillusionment and bigger dreams of the North of Ireland’s youth. The Irish language (in the deep-throated Ulster dialect) is boldly expanded beyond stagnant stereotypes, with rapping that’s grizzly, ferocious, and loads of fun. It’s also a stylistically rich and imaginative record, from spacey opening track “3CAG” that careens into rapid drill beats and ravey about-turns, relentless rhymes propelled by kick drums that fall into funny theatrical interludes. Bars on “I bhFiacha Linne” are big and boisterous, while “I’m Flush” is punky and electro. There are contemplative moments too, like “Better Way To Live” with Fontaines D.C’s Grian Chatten, which seesaws between the mental rhythms of lifting pints and drug binges. “Parful” is an example of the group’s deft balance of song and storytelling, contextualizing partying and electronic music as a means across a divide during and after The Troubles conflict. This is true character and creativity that transcends genre. Comhghairdeas! —A.C.
Magdalena Bay, Imaginal Disk
If you’re leaving 2024 feeling overwhelmed by the state of, well, everything, check out Imaginal Disk, the sophomore album from Los Angeles-based duo Magdalena Bay. Offering an ethereal—and frankly bizarre—escape to an otherworldly universe, the 15-track synth-pop record released in late August, comes, according to Magdalena Bay itself, “straight from the simulation.” What makes Imaginal Disk worth a listen? Its wild concept and immersive, dreamlike soundscape. The album follows Blue, a protagonist who undergoes the implantation—and eventual rejection—of an “imaginal disk” by a mysterious space doctor. This process leads them on a journey to understand the human condition—all set against a backdrop of swelling synths and soaring guitars. Imaginal Disk offers a synth-pop, extraterrestrial-like record that will take your ears on an experience as varied as the journey its protagonist goes on. In my opinion, it’s just the sonic remedy the doctor ordered for the anxiety-inducing events of the past year. The question remains: Are you ready for the “imaginal disk” to be inserted? —Eoghan O’Donnell
MJ Lenderman, Manning Fireworks
Aside from comically modern lyrics like “Deleted scene of / Lightning McQueen / Blacked out at / full speed,” or “Kahlua shooters / DUI scooters,” MJ Lenderman makes the kind of music that could belong in any era. On his latest record, Manning Fireworks, the 25-year-old mixes indie rock sensibilities with a country twang influenced by his Appalachian upbringing. While his musical prowess is indisputable, it’s his wise-beyond-his-years songwriting that sets him apart. Lenderman is able to cut through the wit and expose raw loneliness, cementing himself as one of Gen-Z’s sharpest lyricists. —H.J.
Mk.gee, Two Star & the Dream Police
Mk.gee’s rise has been something of a slow burn, with the 26-year-old musician drip-releasing slices of wonky bedroom pop that first caught the attention of Frank Ocean back in 2017 (and were subsequently promoted on his Blonded Radio station). Producing opportunities—for artists like Omar Apollo and Dijon—then arose, and now we have his hypnotic debut album, Two Star & the Dream Police. Mk.gee is more than ready to step into the spotlight—and has honed a delightful mish-mash of genres and sonic textures that feel distinctly his own in the process. It’s lightly psychedelic, with touches of The Police and Peter Gabriel in those supple, groovy synths, and latter-day Bon Iver in its crunchier, more distorted moments, with Mk.gee’s soulful vocals anchoring his more free-wheeling instincts. If you listen to just one track, make it “Candy”: a warped ode offering forgiveness to a wayward lover—and to himself—that sounds like a lost R&B masterpiece from the ’80s put in a blender. It’s weird and utterly wonderful. —L.H.
Nilüfer Yanya, My Method Actor
If you haven’t yet listened to the British singer-songwriter Nilüfer Yanya—whose intricate, emotionally charged indie pop has marked her as a fast-rising star with unlikely cross-genre appeal—then her brilliant new album My Method Actor is the perfect place to start. Across 11 tracks, she doubles down on her signatures: guitar playing that veers from a grungy, reverb-laden fuzz to intricate acoustic noodling; playful percussion that can sound as much like classic rock drumming as it can delicate, syncopated trip-hop; cryptic and quietly devastating lyrics; and, of course, her smoky, androgynous voice. But it’s on the standout track “Ready for Sun (Touch)” that Yanya’s soulful vision seems to come most vividly into focus: over a rattling staccato, she croons about chasing her own shadow with a twinge of melancholy. Then an achingly beautiful string melody hits, and Yanya’s voice seems to open up, ready to let the light in. “Heavy on my mind / Share it in the light / Beautiful scars / That’s all she’s got,” she sings—and then, simply: “Ready for sun.” —L.H.
Omar Apollo, God Said No
After the tender-hearted Ivory, Omar Apollo is finally hitting back with his follow-up record God Said No. With a swagger on “Spite,” he teases his wishy-washy lover with the repetitious “You like it / You like it / Like I do, like I do, like me.” But Apollo can’t help but return to yearning. In what feels like a sonic cousin of his biggest hit “Evergreen,” the singer (with an assist from Mustafa) delivers “Plane Trees,” where he struggles to accept a dying relationship. “Drifting,” with its subdued vocals over an up-tempo beat helps merge Apollo’s feelings of animosity with his romantic predisposition. —H.J.
Remi Wolf, Big Ideas
With Big Ideas, Remi Wolf has done a lot of growing up. On 2021’s Juno, she dabbled with sobriety and discussed avoiding her exes. Now, she may not be sober, but she’s also not numbing herself to discomfort. Wolf paints vibrant pictures of her life over funky bubblegum tunes, like on “Cherries & Cream” (“But you taste like cherries and cream / Tangerine, avocado / Yeah, I’m allergic but I like it a lot”) and “Alone in Miami” (“Soak up the sound of crypto bros / Eating cubanos by myself.”) A particular highlight is the bonus track “Slay Bitch,” a soulful, funky dance track that could get anybody onto the floor. —H.J.
Sabrina Carpenter, Short n’ Sweet
Short n’ Sweet is far from Sabrina Carpenter’s first album, but her uncanny ability to capture the spirit of sex and dating in your 20s—from the freewheeling fun to the sobering indignities—rightfully launched the singer into the stratosphere. Sonically speaking, the album is full of classic pop hits and twangy country-inspired tunes, but it’s the lyricism that sets it apart. (“That’s that me espresso” became an instant classic, but her desperate delivery of “I beg you, don’t embarrass me, motherfucker” on “Please Please Please” feels like an exposed nerve.) While the record is full of astute observations on modern womanhood, Short n’ Sweet is at its best when it leans into the humor of it all, like on “Slim Pickins,” when she decries having to settle for guys who can’t match her intellect: “Jesus, what’s a girl to do? / This boy doesn’t even know the difference between there, their, and they are / But he’s naked in my room.” Perhaps nothing is a clearer state of the union than her unabashedly horny anthem “Juno,” on which she implies that having a baby at 25 years old is equivalent to a teen pregnancy. —H.J.
St. Vincent, All Born Screaming
All Born Screaming managed to capture our current mood in a way that only St. Vincent can. Angry, aggressive, raw, urgent, and yet also sensual, and down to have a good time. One of her best yet. —L.G-F.
Tyla, Tyla
There is nothing more delicious than the way Tyla sings the words “sweating out my concealer” in “Jump,” the ninth track in her self-titled debut album—and that’s exactly what the 14 songs in this record will have you doing. Tyla has had one of the most captivating debuts in recent memory with Tyla, which managed to raise the bar set by the good-vibes-only omnipresence of her hit lead single “Water.” Back in 2020, Beyoncé gave an interview in which she spoke about the state of the music industry: “People don’t make albums anymore,” she said, “They just try to sell a bunch of little quick singles.” Tyla is an album, one you are compelled to listen to from start to finish every single time. —J.C-U.
Vampire Weekend, Only God Was Above Us
An album that felt like a surprise but shouldn’t have been. Vampire Weekend have been great for such a long time, are by this point such well-established kingpins of the indie intelligentsia, that we’d maybe started taking them for granted. (When was the last time you put on “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”?) But their fifth album Only God Was Above Us is more vital than 2019’s undercooked over-polished Father of the Bride and more sparkly and joyful than just about anything I heard this year. This is a New York indie pop album with a summertime sense of humor, with arresting changes of tempo and mood. You’ve got the swinging irresistible lullaby of “Capricorn,” the louche sprawl of “The Surfer,” and (my favorite) the anthemic rush of “Gen-X Cops.” A tight ten tracks: Keepers all of them. —T.A.
Wild Pink, Dulling the Horns
It’s rare that a rock band’s fifth album is its best (cf. Radiohead Amnesiac, Pavement Terror Twilight, Modest Mouse We Were Dead Before the Ship Sank—none their best). But Wild Pink has hit on something special with Dulling the Horns, a charging collection of bluntly enjoyable indie rock songs on the order of Death Cab For Cutie or The War on Drugs. Frontman John Ross has weathered a cancer diagnosis and in the aftermath seems to have dropped some of the gentle sentimentality of his band’s earlier records. Wild Pink’s new tracks—try “The Fences of Stonehenge” or “Eating the Egg Whole”—have anthemic melodies and fuzzy guitars, ferocious signs of life. –T.A.
Yung Lean and Bladee, Psykos
There’s so much to say about Psykos, a project in which life and art are interwoven on so many levels. It’s one for the books in the sense that it is the first album-length collaboration between longtime friends Yung Lean (Jonatan Leandoer Håstad) and Bladee (Benjamin Reichwald). The former’s deeper, denser, more laconic sound is complemented by Bladee’s sharper, higher, and more ethereal tone, just as their posturing—Lean lying on his back looking up at the sky or dreaming) and Bladee desiring to “lie face down” and “become with the dirt” are complementary. (A perfect puzzling together of Sad Boys and Drain Gang you might say.) The darkness of some of the lyrics “Hanging From the Bridge” is balanced by a somehow laddish upbeatness, as on “Sold Out.” What makes Pykos better than good is “Coda,” the spoken-word-ish opener that deals with the fact that both artists are maturing (Bladee marked his birthday with Cold Visions, with its 30 songs marking his 30th year) but—more importantly—takes stock of the current state of the world, one on “the border of chaos and order.” Psykos was produced by Benny Keating (Palmistry) and Lucio Westmoreland (SilentSky). Keating produced 2017’s Katla for Leandoer96 project (Lean’s solo project), and there are definite parallels between the two albums. Katla was made as Lean was recovering from psychosis, for which the Swedish word is Psykos. In some ways this recording is a testament to resilience, or, given the religious tenor of the lyrics, resurrection. —Laird Borrelli-Persson